Black elite

In the United Kingdom, the Black community has largely consisted of immigrants and their descendants whose residency in the country dates from either the time of the old British Empire or that of the new Commonwealth.

[4] Others attained political and social prominence, such as Olaudah Equiano, a freed African slave who became a campaigner for the abolition of slavery in the Empire,[5] and Mary Seacole, a heroine of the Crimean War.

[6] In the first half of the 20th century the Trinidadian Learie Constantine became a professional cricketer in the Lancashire League and contributed to the campaign for racial equality in Britain.

Emma Thynn (née McQuiston), the Marchioness of Bath as the wife of the 8th Marquess, and Lady Naomi Gordon-Lennox, the adopted daughter of the 10th Duke of Richmond, belong to this sub-group.

In the North of the United States, many educated Black people (taking advantage of their relative freedom)[13] took part in abolitionist and suffragist activities.

[14] In the South, an elite started forming before the American Civil War among free Black people who managed to acquire property.

The Black elite also enjoyed the benefits of living within the white neighborhoods, which further isolated them from the darker-skinned African Americans and which caused many of them to blame them for the downward shifts in life-style choices.

Within its ranks are politicians, entrepreneurs, actors, singers, sports figures, and many more who are otherwise part of America's wider upper-middle class.

Francis Williams , an Afro-Caribbean British scholar and poet. A member of a property-owning Afro-Jamaican family, he took British citizenship in 1723.
The Nigerian British actor David Oyelowo has had a successful career in both Britain and the United States, where he has also taken U.S. citizenship. He was born into a royal family of the Nigerian chieftaincy system .
The model Adwoa Aboah is a Ghanaian British descendant of the Lowthers of Lowther Castle, Earls of Lonsdale . Her earliest Lowther ancestor served as Lord Warden of the March of Western England in the 16th century.
A chief of the Crow Nation , James Beckwourth was the son of an American planter and his enslaved African-American mistress. He is regarded as the most important Black mountain man in the history of the Old West .
Writer and social activist Langston Hughes was one of the leading lights of the Harlem Renaissance . His family, the Langstons, were prominent free Blacks.
Tennis champion Arthur Ashe , also an AIDS activist, became a member of the African-American upper class. His direct line of descent in the United States could be traced to 1735.
The trader and community leader Mohammed Shitta Bey . A chief in the Nigerian chieftaincy system , he was created a bey in the nobility of Ottoman Turkey in the year before his death.
Angélica Larrea , consort to Julio Pinedo , King of the Afro-Bolivians . The Afro-Bolivian monarch claims direct descent from medieval royals of the West and Central African regions.
The philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah – a chief in the Ghanaian chieftaincy system – is also connected to the upper classes of the Western world: His direct line of descent can be traced back to the Norman monarchs of medieval England.